Fran Drescher and Rachel Bloom Are Bringing "The Nanny" to Broadway
Someone get Playbill on the line, because Mr. Sheffield has announced his next big Broadway hit!
Fran Fine, a.k.a. The Nanny, is headed from Flushing, Queens, to the heart of Manhattan: Emmy-nominated star Fran Drescher and The Nanny co-creator (and Drescher's ex-husband) Peter Marc Jacobson have announced that the iconic '90s sitcom is being turned into a musical for the Great White Way, The New York Times reports.
Drescher and Jacobson will write the show's book, while Emmy-winning Crazy Ex-Girlfriend duo Rachel Bloom and Adam Schlesinger have been enlisted to write the music and lyrics. Marc Bruni, who helmed Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, will direct.
“We are SO excited to be working on the Broadway musical The Nanny,” Drescher and Jacobson said in a joint statement. “Nobody is cast yet—we’re plotting—but we feel confident we will find a fabulous actress who is funny, charming, and has a great voice."
“Of course I would do it myself," Drescher added, "but we’d have to change the title to The Granny."
This isn't the first time The Nanny star has dabbled in the theater world. In 2014 she co-starred with Carly Rae Jepsen in the Broadway revival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella.
“The Nanny was a fundamental part of my childhood because it was the first time I saw an openly Jewish female protagonist on television,” Bloom said in a statement. “The story of Fran Fine, however, is a universal one that has touched the hearts of people of every race, religion and orientation. I am so proud to be using the characters established by The Nanny to tell a new story about one woman’s journey to becoming proud of who she is and what makes her different.”
This is just the latest project Drescher and Jacobson have worked on together. The two were married when they created The Nanny, which ran for six seasons on CBS, but they separated after Jacobson came out to Drescher as gay.
Their relationship became the inspiration for their 2011 TV Land sitcom Happily Divorced, which ran for two seasons.